Photo: Andrew Young, Burntisland.
LOCH LOMOND (p. [367]).
Even fifty years ago Dr. Macdonald could write of Govan as “a still rural-looking village,” to which the denizens of St. Mungo resorted on Sundays, after the skailing of the kirks, to “snuff the caller air” by the waterside; and of Partick, on the opposite bank, as an “old-fashioned town with a pleasant half-rural aspect,” also in repute as a holiday-resort on account of the “salubrity of its air.” Now, these adjuncts of Glasgow, with the adjoining Whiteinch, are world-famous as the headquarters of Clyde shipbuilding. From the Govan, Fairfield, and Linthouse yards, on the south side, and from the Finnieston, Pointhouse, Meadowbank, and Whiteinch slips, on the north bank, have been launched some of the largest and finest vessels—mercantile craft and ships of war—that have ever put to sea. Dwelling-houses and public works have spread over the ground behind, so that little is left of the “rural” or “half-rural” villages of the ’fifties. Yet Govan has its spacious breathing-space in the Elder Park, and elms still shade the ancient Celtic crosses and monuments in its parish kirkyard; Partick still borders on Kelvin Grove; and Whiteinch boasts, in its Victoria Park, of a “Fossil Grove” of more hoar antiquity than Runic crosses, or the prehistoric canoes of Govan.
Clyde, as it moves majestically away from the stir and clangour of the water fronts of Govan and Partick, begins slowly to open what Wilson, the descriptive poet of the stream, calls an “ampler mirror” to the sky and the objects on the banks. Its shores resume something of their old romance and rusticity as we come abreast of the woods and lawns of Elderslie and of Blytheswood. Behind them is the ancient burgh of Renfrew—once a fishing port and the rival of Glasgow—which, as part of the earliest heritage of the High Stewards, gives the title of Baron of Renfrew to the Heir Apparent. Further back is the romantic valley of the White Cart, that flows under Gleniffer Braes and through the busy town of Paisley—birthplace of poets, burial-place of kings, and metropolis of thread manufactures—to meet the Black Cart at Inchinnan, and enter the Clyde at the “Water Neb.”
Opposite, on the busier right bank of the river, are the factories and building-yards of Yoker and Clydebank; below these, Dalmuir and its purification works; and lower down, beyond Erskine Ferry, the houses of old Kilpatrick and of Bowling—its little harbour filled with craft, new and ancient—facing the fine lawns and woods that surround Lord Blantyre’s beautiful mansion of Erskine House. Here, where under the rough and furrowed spurs of the Kilpatrick Hills the Highlands meet the Lowlands; where the Forth and Clyde Canal joins the tide-water, and the line of “Grime’s Dyke” (the Roman wall of Antonine) found its western term; here where, according to legend, Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was born and spent his childhood—we might lay down the limits of River and Firth. Or passing the ancient castle of Dunglass and the ford under the Hill of Dumbuck, which was the first great obstacle to Clyde navigation, it might be found in that grandest of landmarks, the Rock and Castle of Dumbarton, 91 miles from the source of the Clydes Burn, and 106 miles from the taproot of the Daer.
The lofty isolated double-headed crag sentinels alike the channel of the Clyde and the valley of the Leven, and mounts guard over the ancient and still thriving burgh at its base, once the capital of the Britons of Strathclyde, and for a thousand years the refuge and defence of kings. On the crown or at the base of the Rock many strange scenes in Scottish history have been enacted. From Dumbarton Queen Mary, a child of six, set sail for France to wed the Dauphin; and to the friendly shelter of its castle she was hastening when—
“From the top of all her trust
Misfortune laid her in the dust.”
The town has still its great shipbuilding industry, its shipping trade, and its foundries and turkey-red and other manufactories. Some of the old houses remain, along with a fragment of its collegiate church. Other bold hills beside the Castle Rock overlook it, and the broad and smooth Leven—harbour and river—divides it into two parts. The view northwards from the Rock carries the eye through the wide and beautifully-wooded vista of the Leven valley into the heart of the Highlands.